For the Honor of the Queen's First Cousin
by Old Emerald Eye
Summary: Ficlet series detailing moments in the lives of Honor Harrington and Mike Henke. Written for Femslash February 2020.
1. rubble

**Title: **For the Honor of the Queen's First Cousin

**Summary:** Moments in the lives of Honor Harrington and Mike Henke.

* * *

**Chapter Title:** the rubble of our sins

**Pairing(s):** Honor Harrington/Mike Henke, Nimitz | Laughs Brightly/Samantha | Golden Voice

**Chapter Summary:** Mike's first courting gift is eye catching. (Eye-gauging, Honor would like to argue.)

Part one of the _For the_ _Honor of the Queen's First Cousin_ series. Written for Femslash February 2020. As you can see, quite influenced by the books.

* * *

The first gift that Mike gave to Honor because she was Honor (a unique and welcome distinction) was an enterprising, if inaccurate, handcrafted attempt at a treecat. The Manticorian who'd made it had done exactly enough research to discover that Sphinxian natives were hexapeds, and no further.

The fact that she'd won it by catching polycerimatic near-ducks pales in comparison to Honor's expression at being handed her prize. Its eyes were a pale, eggshell blue, for one, and and his only other source of information had obviously come from the name, because with the addition of extra legs to a regular cat torso, it appeared more spider than weasel. In short, it looked like nothing more than a cat's head grafted onto a spiders body, with a tail attached.

The crowning achievement of the entire affair, in Mike's own humble opinion, is that the entire thing is a luridly orange tabby. It certainly caught the eye - it had caught her attention. It might even catch the eye of passing shrimp, but as the seafood stall had been at the other end of the fair she hadn't had the opportunity to check before presenting her prize to her girlfriend.

Honor holds it at arm's length, head tilted back to properly take in its magnificence. "Michelle Evelyn Henke." A good start. "What is this abomination." Nimitz is leaning over her shoulder, true-hand extended to poke at her gift, and the corner of Honor's lips are twitching despite her best efforts.

Mike can't contain her grin. "Why Honor, I thought you of all people would recognize a treecat when you saw one."

Nimitz's head snaps up towards her with an indigent bleek. She dances away, laughing, and leads them towards the smell of sizzling meats.

*#*

She christens it Tabitz before the week is through.

It survives decades of space travel unharmed, safely in Nimitz's carrier, and Nimitz safe with it. He spends the time determinedly shedding enough fur onto it to make it the proper colour.

*#*

* * *

*#*

Many years later, Honor proffers her a genuine treecat of her own, anatomically correct to the nearest millimetre. She is a sensible cream, with a length fully proportional to her many limbs. She is also stuffed to the gills with ill-gotten celery. Samantha, she has discovered, is as resistant to her dietary speeches as Nimitz.

"I believe this is yours."

"Honor, Treecats are not supposed to be round!"


	2. rhythm

**Chapter Title:** lone rhythm and blues.

**Pairing:** Honor Harrington/ Mike Henke

**Chapter Summary:** Mike carries her sword.

**TW:** angst, canonical character death (temporary)

Introspective piece set during Honor's Manticorian state funeral.

Part two of the _For the_ _Honor of the Queen's First Cousin_ series. (Not to be confused with my Deal With a Witch series. That's Honor/Elizabeth, no first cousins involved. Also far more slow burn.) Written for Femslash February 2020.

* * *

Mike keeps her steps in time with the drummers slow beat, and all expression carefully locked away.

The procession itself is small, and she walks alone, leading the Lords of the Admiralty along the silent length of King Roger I Boulevard towards King Micheal's Cathedral. The flags crack in the wind like old fashioned, chem-propelled bullets.

There are many reasons for them to choose Mike to carry Honor's sword.

For her blood, a symbol of the Crown's regard for their fallen champion. As a representative of the Navy that Honor had given her life to serve. A close friend and companion throughout her career. And one that no one else will ever know.

Survived by wife, her epitaph will not read. Grief is public, and mourning shared, but that is _private_. Honor had more than earned it on her own merits, but her coffin will lie with Mike's family, and in the fullness of time Mike will rest beside her. It is the smallest of comforts.


	3. flame

**Chapter Title**: Consumed by the Flame

**Pairing**: Honor Harrington / Mike Henke

**Chapter Summary:** Artificial sunsets are a thankfully _rare_ phenomenon on Manticore.

Part three of _For the Honor of the Queen's First Cousin_ series. Written for Femslash February 2020. The last (fully) written for this particular month. There may or may not be one or two showing up for Sapphic September in a month or two.

* * *

Through no fault of her own - by her own reckoning, although others in her life love to say otherwise - Honor has become uncomfortably familiar with excessive splendor over the years of her life. She has attracted far too many friends, passing acquaintances and even some enemies in her decades of service that seem determined to weight her down with as much pomp and gilt as possible to be otherwise.

Which is why she isn't utterly surprised when things deviate from the plan. Not quite resigned to it, but certainly not surprised.

The colourful display at their (second, public) wedding doesn't quite outmatch those let off at Honor's funeral, but someone must've slipped _something_ into the mix, because the fireworks display doesn't illuminate the darkening sky over Jason's Bay so much as turn it into a second sunset for a few long bright moments.

There are only a handful in the Service who could have the authorisation to get at the preparations, and less who could do so without raising alarms directly to her ear. Regardless, Honor knows that, few as they are, they'd give her the same run around as their counterparts in the GSN did with the Medusa class and the SD(P) _Harrington_, should she attempt to get at the root of the matter.

Besides, it's not as if she's liable to die from embarrassment, even if the statueque statue does test her sorely.  
And as amusing as Mike would no doubt find it, she has other plans for her wife, and a more than generous space of time carved from their many responsibilities for their honeymoon. She'd like to do something with that time before the seemingly inevitable crisis occurs.


	4. poison

**Chapter Title:** gentle poison never stung

**Pairing: **Honor Harrington/ Mike Henke

**Chapter Summary:** Mike takes advantage of the effectively unlimited time and refuses to kiss Honor until she's hammered maths into her head properly. It's a sacrifice, but one that she's willing to make for the good of her star kingdom as a whole.

Or, a Soulmate au where once you meet your soulmate the day loops until you kiss. Getting rules lawyered.

Part four of the _For the_ _Honor of the Queen's First Cousin_ series.

Chronologically, this takes place before _the rubble of our sins_, but it's readers choice if it's the same universe or not. Somehow over a thousand words.

* * *

_The title is from Hozier's Sedated. I had a playlist going while doing the last edits, and it was the one laying when I finished and discovered I still needed a title._

_I also made a Leverage reference, for those of you who are that way inclined. It really is a top notch show._

* * *

_My thoughts exactly Barbarossa Rotbart, but that is why they invented fanfiction. And also for doing half a step to the left soulmate aus._

* * *

"So ... are we going to ...?"

"...No."

"No?"

* * *

Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke was quite familiar with the concept of sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom. Quite beside the fact that the Saganami tradition was hammered into the heads of everyone who so much as _glanced_ in the direction of the Navy training school on Saganami Island, she has had years as fourth in line to the throne – a position that was thankfully growing more distant with every nibbling Beth was threatening to pop out for her to spoil (she had never been more convinced that spontaneous reproduction in humans was possible than whenever she caught Elizabeth and Justin making eyes at each other like they'd just discovered the concept of soulmates) - to impart a firm sense of duty.

Which is why, when her day repeats – a fact that she only catches onto _after_ the Hyperspace Tactics lecture, but they did in fact have that class two days in a row, so she thinks its an acceptable oversight. Besides, different actions (like avoiding the over-consumption of celery in a certain Sphinxian native) get different results (being aerially mobbed for said celery, and almost running late), changing enough that she had only noticed commonality when the same surprise quiz was sprung - she postpones applying for a soulmate waiver until the following day's iteration. Mike has already lost half the day's search time, and she can serve the kingdom better by knowing the material her lecturers are trying to beat into their cadets brains inside and out than running around campus like a certain treecat in a celery shortage.

She might even find a better approach to tutoring Honor in the hours ahead. Probably not, but hope springs eternal. And if she doesn't get it this time, Mike always has today again. Until she finds her soulmate, of course. But until then, she has all the time in the world.

* * *

Honor wakes to the press of Nimitz's concerned face against hers, and knows that somewhere in the last – in the next – eighteen hours till she fell asleep in the yesterday that was today once more, she had met her soulmate. She stays prone a few precious minutes more, just taking the fact in.

Somehow, she had never accounted for a soulmate in her planning. Schooling, Saganami Island, then the Navy and defending the Kingdom from the ever encroaching Havenite threat. That had been the plan, in it's most basic form. She'd never seen the need for anything more, not when Nimitz was already a love truer than any she could imagine.

She doesn't apply for a soulmate slip. The Island is large, and she is still new enough that picking out a new face would be low chance at best. She'll attend the same lectures as she did yesterday and watch for someone who's

It's not until she wakes in her room, once more a full day - or two - in her past, that she finds her evidence. Namely, her roommate, who should be out early, still sitting on her bed and wrestling with her comp. Rolls up onto her elbow, Nimitz flowing with her movement until he's tucked under her chin. She recognizes the form on the screen. It's a very distinctive shade and letterhead, compared to Academy standard.

"You're looping too?"

And _oh_, she has not been seen so deeply, not since Nimitz had twined his way into her life.

The immobilizing high lasts only an instant - only an eternity - but it's enough to knock any thoughts of leaving the room from her mind.

It's one thing to meet your soulmate. It's quite another when they refuse to kiss you, or help with the written portion of the soulmate waiver. There's a certain level of mortification in informing your superiors that you need the day off to work on finding someone to kiss you that is only magnified by _not being kissed_ as a result. Not that Mike owes her a kiss. She doesn't owe Honor anything. Even if it is the only way for the two of them to rejoin the normal flow of time.

* * *

"So ..."

Mike is reminded once more that Honor is young. Possibly the youngest ever to be admitted to the halls of the Academy. And she is so very easily flustered. "Are we going to ...?" Honor trails off once more, a blush dusting her cheekbones as she glances at Mike's lips and away again.

But, much as she would love to accept that offer ... "...No." There are some opportunities that should not be squandered lightly, no matter the personal costs involved.

"No?"

"Not until you understand the principles of four-d math. _And_ can apply them consistently."

Mike is too well brought up to laugh at the way her roommate – her soulmate - groans and hides her face against the desk. Her treecat more than makes up expressing his amusement from where he's laid claim to the bunks. It is, she thinks, the start of a beautiful friendship.


End file.
